A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This
week: QI enters the scriptorium.

When I am asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say: ransom notes. HN Swanson

Accounts

Writing evolved with the first cities, as populations grew too big to govern solely through word of mouth. The earliest writing is on clay cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and dates back to 3,300BC. These early examples aren’t songs or poetry but lists and accounts – writing was used for matters which didn’t lend themselves as easily to memory, such as record keeping. One of the British Museum’s oldest examples of writing is a tablet listing the rations of beer allocated to building workers.

Symbols

The use of symbols dates back to the Middle Paleolithic period (from 60,000–25,000BC). Archaeological evidence from the period shows humans marking notches and lines on bones and pebbles.

Marking ownership with stones continued in the Scottish fishing tradition of casting kaivals. After returning to shore, the day’s spoils would be divided into piles, one for each fisherman and one extra for the ship. The men would each make a mark on a stone, with a third party throwing each on to a different pile. The one with your mark on was your share.

Alphabet

The first alphabet was developed by the Semitic people of the Sinai peninsula after they were conquered by the Egyptians in 1,900BC. The Semites borrowed the idea of pictorial glyphs, and the idea that these each stood for a particular sound, from the Egyptians. They also discovered that the symbols would be easier to remember if they were taken from words beginning with the sounds they wanted to represent. So they took 22 Egyptian symbols and mixed and matched them with 22 sounds to form the first true alphabet. Letters represented familiar things – house, hand, water, eye, fish. There were no vowels, so only the properly trained could read the script aloud. In 1100BC, a version of the Proto-Sinaitic script was adopted by the Phoenicians. Their alphabet, which moved further away from hieroglyphics, used abstract shapes to represent consonants. The Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Etruscan and Latin alphabets all stem from the Phoenician alphabet.

Method

The way writing developed depended on the materials around at the time. The Babylonians used cuneiform – which means “wedge shaped” – because they used a reed to mark stiff clay tablets. The Greeks and Romans moved on to tablets with a waxen surface which led to a more elegant, spacious appearance, while the introduction of papyrus called for a light and delicate touch. Northern European runes depending on verticals and diagonals as horizontal marks would be hidden in the natural lines of the wood they were written on. You can use just about any material to communicate: the very first abacus involved writing in dust on a table.

Old invitations

The Vindolanda tablets contain the oldest handwriting to be found in Britain, dating from AD97-103. The “tablets” are thin wafers of wood, about the size of a postcard, and were found in a waterlogged rubbish heap at the Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland. There are more than 400 tablets, which mostly recorded accounts and work schedules. There is also a birthday invitation which is thought to be the earliest example of a woman writing in Latin.

Unknown writing

Rongorongo is a script which has been found on Easter Island, or Rapanui, as its residents call it. Every other line of the script is upside down as, rather than jumping their hand back to the left hand side, they simply rotated the writing surface and carried on. First recorded in the 18th century, it is the only written script to have been developed by a Polynesian culture, but no one can decipher it anymore. The rongorongo hieroglyphics were only understood by the island’s chiefs. Unfortunately, all of them were kidnapped by Peruvian pirates in 1862 and perished in Chilean guano mines, along with a third of the island’s population.

Handwriting

Handwriting comes in cycles – a new form is introduced then develops into a finished style which becomes the ''hand of the period’’. You are ambidextrous if you have the ability to write with both hands. Former American President James Garfield (1831-81) could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with his other. When trying out a new pen, 97 per cent of people write their own name.

The brand new QI book, 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, & James Harkin is published by Faber & Faber at £9.99.

The new 'J’ series of QI is on BBC Two on Friday evenings at 10pm. The XL version is on Saturdays on BBC Two at 9.10pm.